


Fridge Magnets of the Xavier School and Institute

by KittyViolet



Category: New Mutants, X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-25 08:08:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16657351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittyViolet/pseuds/KittyViolet
Summary: Title says it. The school may have more than one fridge.





	1. Chapter 1

Magneto's helmet, the size of a short adult’s palm. Designed as a shop class project in the 1980s when he was a headmaster, at which point it was simply a piece of worked steel, decorated in red and purple with model airplane paint. Since then it’s been taken to San Francisco, taken back to Westchester, taken to Limbo, taken to Central Park, painted over with opalescent varnish that turns white in bright sunlight, defaced, un-defaced, and outfitted with a thumbnail-sized gadget (flip up the faceplate to find it) that temporarily blocks unwanted telepathy (both sent and received). If you come into the kitchen for a late night snack and discover the faceplate flipped up, you can deduce either that there’s a young student who has trouble turning their telepathy off, or that the school was recently attacked.


	2. Chapter 2

A gadget the size and shape of a fountain pen, but with five tiny tubes at both ends and a gauge in the middle, designed to detect spoiled milk, and detect bad meat, and also report (you wave it over the glass to get the bouquet) on the origin and quality of red wine. Hank designed it years ago and even took out a patent, but it ran out of power after five minutes of use. Forge designed a tiny battery and a way to operate it remotely, so they could assess the food in the fridge before they got home. But such a device could easily be pranked, or hacked, or used to inject food with microscopic spores, especially given Forge’s morally questionable history. So Kitty bricked it. Now it’s just a fridge magnet. Nobody has ever told Forge.


	3. Chapter 3

The Brazilian flag, very faded.

The Cape Verdean flag. No one’s sure why.

The Genoshan flag, bordered in black.


	4. Chapter 4

Handmade and oven-finished glassy images of Cutter and Skywise from Elfquest, also quite faded. She loved them so much. No way she's taking them down.


	5. Chapter 5

Two spatulas, always together with two ping-pong paddles. The four magnets together have sixteen possible orientations of top and bottom. It's never been clear exactly how many teachers-- or students?-- use them as signals that way.


	6. Chapter 6

An unusually elaborate, almost pretzel-shaped necktie, often found next to the ping-pong paddles; the necktie (if that’s what it is) magnet has tiny characters in Japanese. Sometimes it’s positioned upside-down.


	7. Chapter 7

Golden 3-D handcuffs. Also sometimes upside-down.

A Wonder Woman magnet from the 1970s, often found next to the handcuffs.


	8. Chapter 8

A semicircular device with parallel striations running from the outer to the inner circumference, recognizable after a few seconds as a hard plastic miniature hairpiece, with tiny watch buttons and dials on the back. Charles once used it for non-secure communications with Lilandra. Warbird makes sure it's switched off whenever she's in the kitchen alone.


	9. Chapter 9

A glittering crystal with a transistor inside the thin end, shaped just like an electric guitar, with the letters LC etched in black on the fat end. There are about 100 of them in existence; it’s an exclusive Lila Cheney fan club giveaway and allows you to communicate directly with the rock star, but only when she’s not on Earth. Sam Guthrie once used his so much he needed a spare; this is the old one (he took the new one when he moved—the two of them definitely keep in touch).


	10. Chapter 10

A super-sparkly Dazzler fan club magnet with the full-body shape of Dazzler, wearing the white-collared, flared-trousers outfit from her first album. It doesn't do anything; it just looks retro and sparkles. Even when she was betraying them, nobody had the heart to take it down.


	11. Chapter 11

A map of Alaska (including the Bering Strait islands), about ten inches high by ten inches wide; it’s clearly been used at some point as a map, for planning someone’s travels, with faded Sharpie X’s, stars, and lines in black and red, along with tiny ballpoint marks that could be towns, or targets, or crashed airplanes.


	12. Chapter 12

One of those panic buttons SHIELD uses to call Captain Marvel. It, too, has been bricked.


	13. Chapter 13

At least two magnetic poetry sets in English, one in Helvetica, one in Albertus Roman: the former says (amid the unused words' and letters’ gibberish) “I, TOO, DISLIKE IT,” the latter “TO STRIVE, TO SEEK, TO FIND, AND NOT TO YIELD.”


	14. Chapter 14

Two other magnetic poetry sets, one in Russian, one in a language whose characters are not often recognized in this dimension, all spikes and hooks and curls: they’re laid out together to spell a long sentence across the top of the fridge that everybody who uses the kitchen knows not to touch. Occasionally the letters glow or spark or smell like gunpowder or myrrh. There are two pentagrams at either end of the sentence, one upside-down, one right side up.


	15. Chapter 15

An all-metal beer opener with a Labatt’s logo and a maple leaf, came with a 24-pack of Labatt’s in a promotion years ago; hard to tell whether it has ever been used. Jean used to tell him it was gross to keep opening beer with his claws, but did he listen? No. (Never spilled a drop.)


	16. Chapter 16

Several regulation playing cards-- the one on top is a seven of hearts-- held together by a clip at the top (it’s the same clip that holds the whole set of cards to the side of the fridge). On the rounded metal of the clip, a years-old bit of duct tape with all-caps Sharpie: DO NOT REMOVE—MAY EXPLODE!!! More recently, somebody put a tiny green post-it note on top of the tape: ANNA CAN HANDLE IT, AMIS. WHATEVER SHE WANTS.


	17. Chapter 17

A multi-column shopping list, including a column specifically for halal.

On top of the list, holding it to the fridge, a plastic mercury thermometer in a rubber case that is also the magnet, the kind last made in the 1970s. Likely a gag gift from Julian. Or from Sooraya.


	18. Chapter 18

A blue and white circular badge for Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci: Merched Yn Neud Gwallt Eu Gillyd, with wavy psychedelic lines behind the psychedelic lettering, handmade from the 7” record label, with a few grains of pink dust stuck behind the magnet.


	19. Chapter 19

[[Warlock.]]


	20. Chapter 20

A larger wooden clip with tiny finials, rose petals, and thorns carved down one side, meant to hold fancy invitations. Right now it’s empty. Only Rachel Grey (who was there for most of them, and reads minds) knows how many of her teammates have stared at the clip and counted up the invitations it’s held: how many weddings, how many medal ceremonies, how many more funerals. Sometimes she likes to think about Northstar’s wedding, that day in the park, with all the white roses and columns and ice and the sun, and the dances so many of us never got to have, some leading to more, and some leading nowhere but back to the dance floor. There ought to be be more ceremonies—no, more days like that.


End file.
